While Target Corp. may have had a short, unsuccessful stint in Canada, things are a little different ‘down-under’, with Target Australia seeing new-found success thanks to a Canadian tech company.
However, Target Australia is not to be confused with the U.S.-based Target Corp. with the same name and same logo:
And while the two retailers (with identical names and branding) are both large, department stores, Target Australia is not a subsidiary of Target Corp.
However much like Target Canada (the now-defunct expansion of Target Corp.), Target Australia, which has been around since 1926 and is one the country’s largest retailers, has had its fair share of struggles.
The Australian doppelgänger, reported a case study from WorkJam, was falling behind in the country’s changing retail landscape and four years ago “reported a significant financial loss caused in part by overgrown internal systems and admin heavy processes. The organization needed to cut costs and increase sales to survive.”
In steps the Canadian digital-based workplace platform WorkJam. Fast-forward to this year and Target Australia receives an award for retailer with “the greatest innovation over the past 12 months,” according to a recent release from WorkJam.
Target Australia attributes this Innovation Champion of the Year award (from the National Retail Association Awards held in Melbourne), to its use of Montreal-based WorkJam, stated the release. The workplace platform apparently helped created more effective communication, and improve productivity across the Australian retailer’s teams and store fleets.
Its allowed more than 15,000 team members to communicate and “all employees had insight into the operations of every store and into the inner workings of the head office. The ability to share stories, post messages, and communicate on topical channels allowed for the sharing of best practices, leading to more productive ways to work,” stated the case study.
“WorkJam provided everything we needed in a single app that our team could access from their mobile devices,” said Andrew Myers, chief operating officer for Target Australia in the release, calling it one of the best decisions the company had ever made. He also claimed that it helped cut costs at the same time as offering a fully connected workforce.
It was just last year that the Montreal start-up, which was founded in 2014, announced that it had raised $12 million in funding for this communication tool during at investment round with Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Blumberg Capital, Founder Collective and NovelTMT.